Aquamaniac Home Control System (AqHomeControl)
What's this all about?
AqHomeControl is not a commercial project, its purely hobby and fun. For many years I'm interested in electronics and programming (mainly C and Assembler) and I especially like to develop solution within tight ressource constraints (like slow MCU, low RAM/FLASH situations).
That's why I don't need mails telling me that there are better and powerfull boards and microcontrollers with all bells and whistles (like Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB and stuff). I know that, and I decided against using those in my own projects. You could say I have too much free time at my hand for doing it this way, but I like to develop things myself instead of relying on code and libraries with complex dependencies.
What is Aquamaniac Home Control System?
AqHomeControl is yet another system for monitoring and controlling your home using sensors and actors.
It consists of these parts:
- network of small microcontroller boards in 3D-printed enclosures designed with OpenSCAD, connected via cable using a simple protocol
- central PC server applications
- data exchange with the microcontroller network (aqhome-nodes)
- data exchange with a MQTT server, e.g. for Tasmota plugs etc (aqhome-mqttlog)
- storage and serving of sensor data (aqhome-data)
- integration of and reaction to sensor data (aqhome-react)
- web server integration for presenting and controlling sensors and actors (aqhome-cgi)
What sets it apart from any other system (and makes it quite nerdy) is this:
- cable-based network (less chance of intrusion compared to WLAN and Bluetooth)
- uses cheap and simple Atmel AVR microcontrollers
- microcontroller firmware completely written in assembler
Used Tools
- avrasm (AVR assembler)
- avrdude (programmer tool to flash microcontrollers)
- EasyEDA (pcb design, started with this because it's free and provides autorouting)
- KICAD (I'm trying to get used to it since its Open Source, but there is a steep learning curve)
- OpenSCAD (for enclosure design)
More Info